


quiet entropy

by Lire_Casander



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Dark, Everyone please hate Jesse Manes, Linear/Non-Linear Narrative, M/M, POV First Person, POV Third Person Limited, Past Abuse, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-11-23 21:16:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18157136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lire_Casander/pseuds/Lire_Casander
Summary: there are few things that can balance entropy as fast as music and love





	quiet entropy

**Author's Note:**

> I don't really know what this is. I just know I had to write it. It's been sitting in my computer waiting for me to get enough courage to post it for over a week now. I hope you all enjoy it, or that at least no one wants me committed somewhere dark for it.
> 
> Canon compliant up until the preview for 1x08. I finished it before the episode aired, but didn’t get to post it by then. It changes between present and past, first person and third person. I hope it doesn’t fall through.
> 
> Unbeta’ed – and isn’t that just funny enough? If you catch any mistakes, please let me know. I’m not a native speaker and sometimes I fall behind in editing. More info and credits at the end.

 

_**so i wrote this song for you** _

The words reverberate in the air before I can process them, and when I do, it’s as if the world explodes around me, shattering me and destroying the apparent calm that I have worked so hard to keep up in front of everyone.

“What if it had been Alex Manes? What if the reason Alex left town that summer was me?”

Max surely knows how to get to me, but I wasn’t expecting that low of a blow when I showed up at his place unannounced. Hell, I never expected him _of all people_ to have suspected anything.

“How long you known about that?” I said stupidly. Of course that isn’t the most pressing matter at the moment. I have to stay focused, I need to get Max on board because without him, I do not know how to help Isobel. I didn’t back when we were fourteen, I didn’t when we were seventeen, I don’t know _now_. I have always relied on him, even through the darkest times we both have undergone in these past years.

He’s not having any of my bullshit attitude, so I just go for the plunge. “Yeah. You're right. If you were the reason that Alex went to war, I'd hate you.”

Max kicks me out of his place and gets inside the house, but I don’t really bulge, not for a second, not for what seems like an hour to me. It’s probably just a couple of minutes. My mind is racing with thousands of thoughts at the same time, and the chaos inside of me is wailing. I can’t control it, I can’t quiet it. It’s been years since that last moment when everything came silent for enough time to let me know what happiness felt like.

The windows of my truck crash into millions of small crystals as I rage it out, no mercy at my own despair.

The desert is my best option – my _only_ option – right now, so with a destroyed car I drive into the emptiness surrounding Max’s house. I have a lot to think about, or perhaps all I need is just the silence to appease my soul.

Do I really have a soul to save? To love?

The car comes to halt without me really stomping on the brakes. It’s my mind working its powers, taking over me as it always does. As if I have no decision over myself – as if I ever had any to begin with.

Mine has always been a story not to tell. Survivor of a crash that goes back in time much further than anticipated. Abandoned, tossed around, battered, bruised. Rinse and repeat. Until I found a purpose, a way out of Earth, if only I could put all the pieces together. By the time I turned fourteen, I knew I could build a spaceship and find my way back home.

And then everything came down in shreds and our lives were put on hold – my life was put on hold. I feel like for the past ten years or so I have been trying so hard to keep pace with what everyone else needed instead of taking into account what I needed.

I scream into the desert, the sand lifting under my lack of touch, surrounding me, burying me, just like I did with that drifter so many years ago. How I wish I could bury every other memory with that one, but they resurface over and over again until I can’t fight them anymore, and they wash over me.

They shred me and tear me apart, and I can do nothing but dive into them.

They’re not my usual nightmares – this time the memories of the losses are closer in time. No trace of old wounds being pried open. I see Alex coming to the reunion, I see all the times he’s come to the Airstream just to rip my heart from my chest and toy with it. All the times I’ve let him do it.

The waves keep coming and I’m not fighting them. And that’s when the nightmares begin, just like any other time. And I relive everything that’s happened, all over again, as if I’m fourteen, fifteen, eighteen, once again. As if someone else were stargazing into my soul.

So maybe I do have a soul.

I allow them to reign over me – like a movie playing at the drive-in – as the sand keeps spinning around me and I dive into the memories that visit me at night to remind me of who I could have been – who I will never be.

 

_**i met you in the dark** _

_**you lit me up** _

It wasn’t a secret that Michael loved the desert more than anything in this world – and probably more than anything in _any_ world. Whenever he had a chance to escape whatever foster home he was trapped in, he hitched a ride to the dunes and got himself lost in the scent of wildness.

Sometimes, though, he didn’t have to jump out a window and into the darkness. Sometimes, a gentle adult would take him along with other kids around his age on a trip to the sand and the sun. When it was Mrs Manes, Michael never felt out of place nor strange in a world he didn’t belong to.

When Mrs Manes took them on her minivan to the dunes, Michael felt free.

It was one of those slow Sunday mornings, after mass. Mrs Manes had taken her youngest child out of the church for a treat of ice cream, and they were walking down the street when she spotted Michael sitting on a bench, facing the sky with his eyes closed. He would always remember the fight with his foster father, the way he had threatened him long before beating the daylights out of him – his back ached and his head throbbed, but at least he had been able to flee from the trailer, followed by the yells of that man he could not bring himself to call _father_.

Alex had been the first to see him, and he had wandered shyly to where he was sitting, a few seconds before his mother noticed Michael in his grey t-shirt and dark hoodie, long sleeves covering whatever scars remained from previous wars. “Hey, Michael,” he talked softly when she reached him. He opened his eyes and blinked at her a moment before focusing and standing up to greet her. “How are you doing, son?”

Her voice was always so even – Michael wished he could have grown surrounded by the bliss that voice brought him.

“Good, Mrs Manes,” he replied after a beat. “Just chilling.”

“Care to join us?” she motioned between her son and her. “We were going to have some ice cream and maybe we could go for an adventure.”

Michael beamed. He _loved_ adventures. Next to his mother, Alex smiled brightly at him as well, but Michael knew better than to keep his hopes up – he knew he couldn’t really spend the day with them. “An adventure sounds great, Mrs Manes, but I’m not sure I can go.” He almost always was short of pocket money – he didn’t have any ways of earning his own money as of yet, what with being fifteen and not of age to legally work anywhere – and he was ashamed to admit that the last time he had eaten _anything_ had been around Friday night. His stomach churned.

“Please,” she said, making it sound as if he was doing her a favor instead the other way around. “I’m sure we won’t have the same fun without you, right, Alex?”

The brown eyes staring into his, burning a hole in his soul, made the deal. “Thank you, Mrs Manes,” he complied, following them under the April sun into the Crashdown.

After a yummy snack – Mrs Manes had thrown in hamburgers and fries and sodas to go along with the ice creams under the premise that _you boys need the energy to keep growing up, you see_ as if she hadn’t known all along that Michael was famished – she took them on a road trip to the desert.

He enjoyed the jolt of freedom he felt whenever he was out in the sand and the sun. The desert called to him, and he felt so at ease surrounded by the immensity of endless dunes. He belonged to the desert, and the desert was the closest to home he’d ever known.

Until he met those brown eyes, and the weight of his fifteen years of abuse in this world come down crushing him just to lift him up in a second. Alex was capable of reminding him of what he didn’t have – a family, a home, _love_ – and yet he could make Michael soar with just a glance and a smile. He didn’t know what to make out of his own feelings whenever Alex was concerned, and he really didn’t want to dive too deep in them.

He didn’t want to feel too attached to anything or anyone because he was planning on leaving Earth to search for his true home.

But all his plans dissolved into thin grains of sand slipping through his fingers when Alex took two guitars from the trunk and offered him one. They laughed and played for what felt like hours, Mrs Manes taking pictures and singing silly made up songs as they strummer the strings. Michael couldn’t help the smile spreading on his face at the sound of Alex playing guitar so close to him he could _breathe_ him.

He would always remember that day, held it close to his heart.

It was the first time he felt quiet inside without having to resort to just music, or the acetone. It was just Alex and his gaze, and his entropy simply muted.

Just a few weeks later, Mrs Manes passed away in an unexplainable accident, and all he was left was a photography of them and the sheer pain of having lost the closest to a mother figure he ever had. At the funeral, he realized he had both lost a mother and an ally – Alex was sitting on the front row, between his father and his brother Harry, with Jesse and Robert right behind him. His stance was stiff, and although Michael blamed it on the loss he had just underwent, inside he knew something was completely wrong.

As they exited the church, Alex limped his way helped by his brothers, his father eyeing him closely. Michael could see a small purple bruise under his shirt when he stretched his hand to greet one too many people wanting to share their condolences. But he chose to ignore the nagging thought in the back of his head and turned away after muttering a few meaningless words with him, all under the strict military gaze of a father that he knew was as bad as his foster parents.

That day, Alex Manes died with his mother, and the change it brought him started to make them both drift away. The memories and the pain were stronger than them, and in the end the price Alex had to pay – the price they _both_ had to pay – turned out to be too high.

 

_**even when we're ghosts** _

_**‘cause you were always there for me** _

The envelope with his name on it hit the floor with a small swishing sound as he frantically unfolded the letter and read it. First he paled. Then he grinned.

 _A full ride to UNM_ , he thought.

Life was finally looking brighter for him, after all the random foster houses, after all the abuse and the loneliness, in the end he was going to end up somehow lucky. He would be able to study the stars, become an engineer, build up some spaceship. Turn his back on this world and leave for his own home planet.

He couldn’t wait until later to tell Max and Iz. He bet they would be as excited as he was. He closed his eyes and small pieces and bits in the junkyard began flying around, smoothly, creating circles in the air around him. The rage inside was appeased a little, just with the promise of a future far from Roswell. He let the objects land on the ground and ran a hand through his locks.

He was going to miss his friends – _his siblings_ – but he needed out.

He took his jacket and picked up his keys. Maybe he could use a ride through the desert before Max and Isobel showed up at the place where he used to park the truck.

The dunes were exactly where he had left them the night before, sprawled before his eyes like a display of endlessness. He drove through the desert, radio up above the sound of the revving engine, wind whooshing through the open window. And in the middle of it all, a small shadow laid so still he could almost miss it if he so much as blinked. He blinked, but the shadow didn’t move. So he pulled over, killed the engine and set foot out of the car, ready for a new mystery.

When he came closer, he could see it was Alex Manes sprawled on the sand, still as if asleep. His chest heaved a bit, so Michael knew he wasn’t dead; he would have thought otherwise had he only been guided by his sight – Alex was bleeding through his nose and the left side of his face looked swollen and almost purple. Something welled up in Michael’s chest, something he didn’t fully understand but that led him in a rush towards Alex, made him kneel besides him and search his body for other injuries. There wasn’t any vehicle nearby, so his fleeting idea of Alex being involved in a car accident was dismissed shortly after he began his exploration.

“Alex,” he whispered. “Alex, can you hear me? What happened?”

The other boy didn’t seem to have heard him. Michael shook him a little harder, and in a couple of seconds Alex began to cough and spit blood.

“Thank God you’re awake,” Michael muttered. “What happened, Manes?” He resorted to last names once again, not wanting to show his weakness whenever Alex was concerned. But the boy sprawled on the sand shook his head no and tried to push him away – with little to none success, he was so weak.

“Leave me alone,” he managed to croak.

“Manes, there’s no way I’m leaving you alone in the middle of the desert all beaten up to a pulp,” Michael admonished. “Just let me get someone, should I call your father? Any of your brothers?” As he spoke, he could see Alex paling even more, the purple in his cheek standing brighter. “Okay, I get it, no family. But I cannot leave you here alone. Can you stand up? Maybe I could take you to the hospital.”

“No hospitals, please,” Alex tried his best to sit up. “Just... could you please give me a ride to the museum? I think I could take it from there.” He looked every bit of the stubborn kid Michael had known growing up, so he complied. He had no other option really.

He helped Alex to the truck and drove him back into town in a bitter silence, as the boy looked out the window and offered him a sight of disheveled despair.

 

_**and you look as beautiful as ever** _

_**i played it cool and i swear that every day you'll get better** _

Michael was seriously thinking about leaving school, leaving Roswell, way before college started in fall. Life wasn’t that good there anyway, although he had Max and Isobel, but he didn’t have a home, not anymore. The foster care had finally let go of him, after years of relocating him in very diverse homes and group houses, each one worse – if that was even possible – than the previous. Now he just wanted to live his own life, fall asleep every night under the stars he loved talking to. It was the only moment of his long days that he felt he was worthy of respect and love. He was an outcast of sorts, the genius and the rebel, and he was tired of always having to live up to expectations he didn’t want to fulfill any longer.

He decided to skip his classes and hole up in the music room. It was another of his passions, when music played he felt lifted and his worries – the burden of an existence he never wanted to live through – vanished in a puddle of notes and melodies.

The guitar called him by his name, he could hear it in his mind. The music room was silent and dark when he picked it and rushed out of the school and to the back of his truck. Just the feeling of the wood in his hands, the weight of the instrument on his fingers, calmed him in a way nothing else had been able to. He could spend hours playing, lost in the melodies both known and unknown that flooded his memories.

He could probably skip the whole school altogether and it would be perfect, for music would still be with him the whole ride to wherever he wanted to go next.

And then, all of a sudden, Alex Manes entered the frame, taking the guitar from his hands and scolding him about stealing things from others. But Michael wasn’t really listening to the first part of his speech, too busy discovering that sunlight brought hazel to Alex’s dark eyes, giving them a whole new depth. He had to fight back the urge to lean in and watch them from closer up.

He had forgotten how those eyes made him feel, for they had fallen apart about two years before, when Mrs Manes left them alone to fend for themselves in a world of wolves and traitors. But Alex was right there in front of him, and Michael better pay attention. Alex wasn’t looking any amused by the situation.

“This is mine,” Alex was saying in a curt voice.

“I was gonna return it,” he managed to retort, out of balance for a second. “And-and it was out of tune, so you're welcome.”

Alex stopped retaliating, eyeing the back of the vehicle where Michael had been strumming the whole morning instead of attending class, the blankets and sheets visible from almost every angle. “You really do live in your truck.”

Michael scoffed audibly. “All the rumors about you true?” There, right where it hurt the most. _Way to go, Guerin_ , he thought to himself. Alex faltered in his step before replying.

“You're kinda lucky, you know. Things at my house suck.”

And Michael was reminded, just with the sad tone Alex is using, of the day Mrs Manes died, of the void in those expressive eyes that had died along with her. the afternoon he found a shadow in the desert, of the purple and the white. Of the afternoon he found a shadow in the desert, of the purple and the white. He didn’t like thinking about that particular event, because he still felt guilty of having abandoned Alex in front of the museum to fend for himself – even if it was the very same Alex Manes who had asked him to do it.

“There's this toolshed out behind my house,” Alex kept on. “It's warm and I go there when things get bad.”

He walked away without a second look, but Michael could feel the warmth spreading through his limbs, a calm he had never known. Unspoken, the promise of help underlying in Alex’s words shed a ray of hope in his otherwise self-imposed low existence.

Maybe he had been wrong all along. Maybe music wasn’t the only thing to keep him sane. Maybe a pair of almost-hazel eyes had something to do with it as well.

 

_**you made me feel as though** _

_**i was enough** _

Michael had decided to go with no tie for his prom suit, and it had proved to be the best idea he had ever had when Alex faced Valenti out of the venue and a fight ensued. For a moment he thought about leaving them to fence for themselves, but Alex had thrown the first punch and Valenti had retaliated – only Valenti had his squad with him and they were four against one, and Michael couldn’t stay still.

“Get off!” he shouted, getting in the middle and risking earning himself a punch. “You okay?”

The look he got himself lost into would have been worth every single punch, had there been any his way.

It only lasted for a second before Alex walked past him in furious stomps, hand lingering longer than politely expected on his shoulder. Michael hesitated briefly before turning on his heels and disappearing after him.

He missed the knowing look Max shot his way.

Or maybe he wanted to ignore it altogether.

“Let’s get out of here,” Alex commanded, and all Michael could do was nod and follow his footsteps.

When Alex led him to his own truck, Michael scoffed. “Really, Manes? Don’t you have your own ride or something?” It came out harsher than he intended, but Alex didn’t seem to mind.

“Take me to the desert,” he said instead, surrounding the truck and waiting for Michael by the passenger door. “Unless you want to stay here. I don’t want to force you to do anything you don’t want to, but –”

“Okay, Manes, whatever. I didn’t want to be here forever anyway,” Michael chided, jumping into the truck and starting the engine, not saying out loud what he suddenly wanted to scream – _I’d go wherever you go, I’d leave this planet for you, I’d_ stay _in this planet for you_. “The desert it is.”

For the while it took to get to the first dunes, they rode in silence. Alex was stargazing through the window, reminding Michael of a moment not so long before. The bruise had faded, but it seemed as if the pain subsided beneath the skin. He craved to touch, but he restrained himself. Instead, he pulled over near his favorite spot – so close to the cave he could almost see it, yet far enough so Alex wouldn’t find out.

Only when they exited the car did Michael realize that Alex was trembling. It wasn’t subtle nor faint, Alex was shuddering in the cool desert air. “You okay?” he repeated.

“It’ll pass. I just need space, need time, I-I don’t know. I think I need to get out of here for good. It’s like the only good things in my life left when my mother-when she...” he trailed off, sighing audibly. “I only have the desert left, and the memories of how we used to be when we were carefree and happy.”

“Hey,” Michael said softly as he approached Alex. “Maybe you just need a friendly silver lining.” He stretched his hand and when Alex took it shakily, Michael pulled him closer. They were almost fused together but Alex was looking down, ashamed and unsteady.

It broke Michael a little bit more than he was ready to admit.

“Look,” he whispered almost on Alex’s head, the other boy so curled up in himself Michael feared he would break a muscle or something. “There might be shooting stars tonight. Don’t want to miss the show, do you?”

Alex did as told, but he didn’t stare into the sky. He looked straight into Michael’s eyes, straight into his _soul_. And there he was, feeling so exposed and naked that he wanted to run away, yet still holding that gaze for all it was worth.

And this moment was worth his life, he realized fleetingly.

They didn’t talk about what had happened – with Valenti, between them, whatever. Michael opened the back of the truck and they lay down, the stars flickering above them. He took a guitar he had borrowed from the music room – hopefully not _Alex’s_.

“Care for a little music?”

“Go for it,” muttered Alex, his eyes never leaving the sky.

So Michael strummed a little, hesitated a lot, and then settled for a tune he was sure Alex had never heard before – mainly because he had written it during the past months, ever since he had first noticed that Alex looked back at him in the same way he did look at Alex, or at least he hoped so.

 _I've read all I need to_  
_From the look on the mirror_  
 _It's getting much clearer for me_  
 _And others around_  
 _That I'm not who I say_  
 _Maybe just for today, I am_  
 _Perfection's not guaranteed_  
 _'Cause I don't know what I need_  
 _Work in progress, it seems_  
 _This is me_  
 _I'm not gonna stop you_  
 _From wanting much better_  
 _For needing to weather this storm_  
 _Of assurances broken_  
 _That are swarming our senses_  
 _Breaking down our defenses again_

Halfway through the song, Alex had sat up with what seemed like utter disbelief in his face. Michael glanced briefly at him but decided he didn’t want to risk his emotions overflowing him, so he focused on the guitar. Once the song was over, he sighed and slumped a little bit forward, boneless.

It took a while for any of them to say a word, and it was Alex who broke the silence.

“Could you please take me home? It’s well past my curfew, my dad isn’t going to be happy about it.”

The magic dissolved, the moment gone. Michael buried the feelings bubbling inside of him the same way he buried the man Max killed that fateful night four years ago, and drove back to Roswell thinking that he was, in fact, a complete failure.

Afterwards, when he went searching for Isobel or Max, he couldn’t find any of them. Max’s absence didn’t trouble him, but Isobel... He had a bad feeling in his gut, one he could not ignore. He went on a hunt for Max, and then on a mad game of seek and hide with Isobel for what felt like eons and was just one night.

This was the story of his life. He’d better get used to it.

 

_**i knew i needed you** _

_**but i never showed** _

The toolshed had quickly become his refuge. He had heard somewhere that home didn’t need to be a roof above your head and a picket fence. For him, home was a scent and a decorated wall.

Michael was doodling spacey things in his notebook when he heard the knob turn. Startled, he began to hoard his things as fast as he could, but he wasn’t quick enough.

“Guerin, relax. It's just me.” Alex was on the frame, light entering the toolshed around his silhouette. Michael felt his insides calm instantly, whatever chaos was warring in his soul silenced by Alex’s soothing voice.

“I was just, uh, hang-hanging out.” _Could you please stop stammering, Guerin?_

“It’s fine. It's good that you've been staying here. It's cold at night.”

A comfortable silence ensued. Michael noticed the case Alex was carrying but didn’t say a thing; he was afraid that, had he dared to speak, the magic of just being around Alex might dissolve in a fit of sparkles.

The other boy offered the case as if an offer of peace. “Uh, hey, I-I brought you this. It's, um it's my brother's. I don't know. I thought maybe you'd use it.”

It left Michael gobsmacked. In his short but intense life nobody had ever given him anything without taking something from him. He eyed the case suspiciously before asking in a low and demanding voice, “Why are you being so nice to me?”

“People don't always have an agenda. They can just be nice to each other for no reason sometimes.” The laugh that accompanied the words finally disarmed him, but Michael needed his façade to stand up, to endure whatever charm Alex was trying to put on him, because his whole survival depended on not being attached to anyone – anyone that wasn’t Max or Isobel.

Anyone who didn’t know about the true nature of his existence.

“Not in my experience,” he retorted, opening the case to reveal a battered guitar, rough around the edges, but a guitar nonetheless. He sighed contentedly. “It's the only thing that makes me feel quiet. Playing music.”

Confusion etched in Alex’s face.

“I have all this chaos going on inside me all the time, and all I want to do is get away from myself. But then I play, and my, uh my entropy changes. Everything goes quiet.” Michael strummed the guitar with expert fingers, trying to avoid getting lost in the sound. “Thank you.”

“You're welcome.”

And all of a sudden the moment was there, between them, just like that night out in the desert, just like the day out when they played guitar when they were fifteen – just like the day Alex vowed out loud that he didn’t give a damn about Valenti being a jerk to him. Michael could see it in Alex’s eyes, could feel it in his own bones.

_The moment._

Alex leaned in, and for a second Michael allowed himself to just feel. But his reality hit him hard back into sense – he was living in his truck, spending the coldest nights in a toolshed, with no future, a past plagued of secrets and an uncertain present.

He couldn’t – he wouldn’t – do that to someone he cared so much about.

 _Get your shit together, Guerin,_ he admonished himself. _It’s not like you care about him, do you?_

The truth was – he did.

He chickened out, turned his head away and began playing the guitar Alex had just gifted him with.

Anything to keep his feelings at bay – anything to feel just quiet inside.

He already knew Alex was his war, but he was also his peace.

 

_**i knew i loved you then** _

 

_**but you'd never know** _

_**’cause i played it cool when i was scared of letting go** _

They were hanging out, doing silly things at the Crashdown like the two bratty teenagers they were, talking about Isobel and girls in general. Michael had always felt at ease around Max; he was, along with Isobel, his best friend. Long past were the days when he resented them for having everything he had been deprived of – a family, a home – because they had made up for that by giving him everything they had – a love that was pure and endless and loyal.

They were having so much fun, until Max started talking about Liz Ortecho and how he wanted to date her. Michael didn’t even know she had called it off with Valenti, but didn’t dare to interrupt Max as he went rampant on feelings as if he were some sort of tortured impersonation of Tolstoy.

“Dude, we had a moment,” he was saying, and that caught Michael’s attention. “That's one of those moments that, like, I feel like it's worth fighting for.”

And wasn’t it a punch in the gut.

At those words, he remembered eyes looking at him so full of hope then so full of disappointment it had hurt him so much, he hadn’t been able to hold his gaze. That had been a couple of weeks before, and he had yet to find a way to make it up to Alex, because.

 _Because_.

They had shared one of those moments Max was referring to, and he had let it slip away in a turbulent swirl of guitar strings.

“Yeah,” he retaliated, suddenly sobered up from his laughter fit. “I know those moments.”

He really didn’t pay attention to anything else when Max finally stood up and offered himself as designated driver for Liz to go on their bio project. Michael was so lost in his own thoughts that a tornado might have swept the whole town up, and he wouldn’t have noticed.

He remained seated in the booth at the Crashdown, digesting his own feelings, for long moments. For a second he was intent on chasing after Alex and telling him everything – how he felt, how much he wanted to kiss him – and the next his resolve faded in a pool of fear – what would happen to them if Alex ever realized who they were, what _he_ was? The fries forgotten on top of the tray, he jumped up and out of the café without really planning to, and soon after he was heading to the only place he knew he could find Alex.

For he was going to do something. Was it end their friendship for sure this time or fight for the little something they had going on, he wasn’t sure. Maybe he’d find out once he was face to face with Alex.

He reached the UFO museum almost on autopilot. Alex was behind the glass, selling tickets and looking mostly annoyed in the hot June midafternoon weather. When he saw Michael, his stance changed though.

He started to look apprehensive. Defensive.

“Hey. Can we talk?”

“Uh, yeah,” came the reply, as uncertain as his own words had sounded. “I guess.”

Emboldened by some sort of strength – he really hoped it was coming from his alien side – he demanded, “Somewhere private, maybe?”

Alex just shook his head, signaled the entrance and just left through it, and Michael was bolting through the door, nervous enough to last him a lifetime.

Alex led him to the planetarium, the room where all the stars and planets hang from the ceiling and there even was black light to keep the mood. They were alone. Alex fidgeted a little before speaking, “Okay, talk.”

But Michael had forgotten not only what he was about to say, but all the words he had ever learnt. Under the light of the fake stars, Alex stood completely bare – he could sense his soul mourning for what could have been but never wasn’t.

Michael had never thought he could feel this much for a human being – _any_ human being. That it was a boy wasn’t much of a shock. But for it to be Alex Manes...

He had never understood the human psyche, at least not as well as Isobel did. He had never comprehended why they acted so impulsively, how they could live with the burden of their unforgiving acts. He never truly believed he would be allowed to feel the way they did – the way he secretly hoped for.

He never truly believed there would be a time when he looked into someone’s eyes and all he could see would be love.

The love he was feeling coming from Alex.

He surged forward and just kissed him.

His soul soared for a second before he went completely quiet inside, and the peace overtook him.

 

_**i'm gonna love you 'til** _

_**my lungs give out** _

So that was what it felt like. Michael shook his head in disbelief as he looked at the body next to him in the narrow bunk. Alex was so perfect, in so many ways, that he didn’t actually think he deserved to be in the same planet as him. How come had he landed enough luck to have been able to share a moment of such intimacy with someone like Alex?

This was what bliss felt like, the way Alex gazed at him from under his eyelashes. This was what perfection felt like, to have his body against his own chest, feeling his heart skip a beat. This was what Max’s novels always rambled about – making love, and not whatever he had been doing with former lovers.

This was what _love_ felt like. Impulsive, pure, unadulterated, _true_ love.

He stood up after a while, his skin tingling and his eyes glowing. Alex sat up in the bunk, smile playing softly in his lips, both of them exhausted yet thrilled. There was hope and promise for more laced silently in the air.

As the door opened with a violent crack, Michael knew it was all going to be blown up, but he was not quick enough to prevent it. In fact, even though the situation unfolded pretty fast-paced, he could witness it as if it was developing in slow motion.

A hand picking up a hammer. A mouth quirking up in a grimace. Derisive words and arrogant attitude.

Alex trembling in fear. And that – _that_ – he could not stand, not when the hand shot out and the fingers closed around his throat, tightening in a deadly grip.

“Don’t touch him!”

And all hell broke loose.

The hammer smashed his knuckles and all he could see was red. Pain coursed up his spine and exploded in his mind with the force of a truck. He tried his best not to faint as his blood spilled under the pressure, but he couldn’t help his scream.

What he couldn’t help either was the force from his insides from bursting, lifting the tools on top of the table into the air and turning the toolshed into a living inferno for a second, right before the aching took away his focus and everything fell back into place – _almost_. It was all so fast, so fuzzy, that maybe he could blame it on the strength Jesse Manes was using to destroy his limb. He couldn’t be sure. He was too engrossed in not losing his conscience, not losing his _life_.

The yells coming out of Alex’s throat as his hand was beaten up to a pulp rang in his ears for weeks.

He wouldn’t remember how he got up, what seemed hours after the monster had taken Alex by the collar of his shirt, leaving him to die a horrible death in a puddle of blood. His hand throbbed, bones visible through the injury, but it was his soul the most damaged. Trembling, he stood up and exited the toolshed, holding his hand as up as possible, never looking back. He jumped into his own truck and tried his best to drive into the desert with only his right hand maneuvering the wheel. He would have time to find something to bandage it with, for now he only wanted to get away.

The desert had become his refuge a very long time ago, it being the only place where he could watch the stars without any light pollution. Once upon a time, it had been a tomb. That night, the desert turned out to be his confident. He pulled out of the road and searched the glove box for acetone. _For fuck’s sake_ , he murmured to himself, _there has to be some left_. He had been downing the bottles just like Isobel downed her isotonic beverages, but still. When he found one astray bottle, he opened it with his good hand and tried his best not to drown in it. For a second the throbbing relented, although he was still shaking – maybe the shot of adrenaline, maybe the fear. He gulped in more acetone. And then.

The pain.

It hit back just like lightning, only this time it didn’t come from his hand. It came from inside – from his mind.

“Isobel,” he gasped.

They were all damned.

 

_**i promise 'til death we part** _

_**like in our vows** _

He had refused in several occasions Max’s healing powers to try and right his wrecked hand. Isobel was so out of everything that Michael needed to keep an extra eye on her, and the pain helped him stay focused.

Maybe he didn’t want the ache to be soothed away with the happiest memory of his life. Maybe he didn’t want Max to heal him because he all of a sudden couldn’t stand being in the same secluded space than who he used to call his brother.

Michael sighed as he rearranged the blankets on the back of his truck. At least it was already the end of June and the nights weren’t as cold as they used to be. He could fall asleep watching the stars above his head every night. As he pressed the bottle of acetone to his lips to muffle the pain, he let his thoughts drift to the events of the past few weeks.

Isobel choking Rosa with her hand on her human mouth. Max deciding what was best for them all, as always. Michael following orders, the only one of them who hadn’t taken a life, but the only one who would forever be etched in Isobel’s mind as the criminal he wasn’t.

Nothing compared to the strife of losing Alex.

They hadn’t seen each other alone after that fateful moment in the toolshed. Alex had always been surrounded by either his father or one of his brothers, always sporting a black eye or a strange limp. No one seemed to care enough to notice. Michael did, but he couldn’t do anything.

He couldn’t let Alex know how he felt about him because there was no room for a future for them – the only way out he could think of was running away, and he clearly wouldn’t be doing that in any near future – if any time.

So he kept his distance although it hurt him more than he was keen on admitting.

“Is there room for another lost soul?” a voice asked out of the blue behind him, startling him. When he turned around, he could see Alex by the passenger’s door, looking every bit of the bashful teenager that he was.

Michael sighed. He really didn’t want to talk about anything, not right then, probably not ever. However, he skimmed a little to his right and left enough space for Alex to jump on the trunk and sit with his legs hanging in the air.

They remained silent for long moments, just stargazing the sky, neither of them wanting to break the peace between them. Michael knew he could live forever with Alex silently accompanying him in his lifelong trip to the stars, but he also knew someone had to speak up, or the feelings would choke them.

“What are you doing here, Alex?” he whispered, a tiny thread of hope laced within his voice. “I thought you were under home arrest until the end of your days.”

“I didn’t think I could manage a way out, but,” Alex whispered back, trailing off a bit. They were alone in the open desert, but it felt wrong to talk louder than a mutter, for Michael didn’t want to disrupt the ghosts between them. “But I had to, tonight.”

“Why tonight? We have been playing this game for weeks, and I am tired of it. You shouldn’t be here. If your father finds you here with me, what happened at the toolshed would be nothing compared to what he might do to us now.”

Alex winced at the harshness of his words. “Why didn’t you go to the hospital?” he asked in lieu of answering Michael.

“Do you really think I would walk into an ER room and explain to whatever doctor there that your father, a reputed _military man_ , had beaten the lights out of me, a teenager, with a hammer because he found what you and I had been doing at his toolshed?” The words came out more harshly than he had expected. And although it wasn’t the real reason – he couldn’t even fathom how Alex might take that he was, in fact, an alien – they spoke a truth that could not be denied. “Not a chance that might happen. I wouldn’t want the outcome of it all. You know how that would have developed.”

“Maybe it would have been better than this,” Alex said quietly, shaking a little. “We don’t have anything, he took that from us. And he’s taking much more.”

“What do you mean?”

Alex looked at his hands. “He’s forcing me to join the military.”

“Come again?” Michael screeched in disbelief. “You don’t really-that can’t be true. You will be turning eighteen in a few weeks. He can’t force you to do anything you don’t want to do.”

The look Alex sent his way made him feel weary. The throbbing pain in his hand reminded him that Jesse Manes could do whatever he wanted to whomever he wanted.

“My father is nuts, Michael,” Alex stated after a beat. “But he’s as dangerous as they come. So.”

“So what? So you give up? On everything? On _us_? Just like that,” Michael was on the verge of tears and he didn’t like to feel so vulnerable, to show his fears and insecurities so openly – he didn’t want to be the prey for whatever was out there going to hunt them.

When Alex looked up, Michael saw defeat and fear and pain in his eyes, and it broke him even more than he thought he could be broken.

“So I’m abiding by his rules. I don’t want him to hurt you more than he already has. So. I’m enlisting in the Air Force. Tomorrow.”

Michael took a second to digest the news, so raw that they cut his soul in pieces. Alex’s tone was so final, he knew there was little he could do. So he decided to do the only thing Jesse Manes could never take from him.

He kissed Alex in a rush, forcefully, desperately. And when Alex plied under his lips, Michael felt he had won and he had lost. Maybe he had only lost.

They kept kissing under the stars, until that last night of theirs faded into pink and orange at daybreak.

 

_**we danced the night away** _

_**we drank too much** _

The first time Jim Valenti arrested Michael, he had been driving around town high on acetone. The sheriff had halted him, and Michael had been unable to walk a straight line, so he had been taken in and locked up in the drunk tank for the first time of so many, just on the edge of twenty. Alex had been gone for almost two years by then, and news of his first deployment to Afghanistan had spread through, leaving Michael trembling in fright and distress. He couldn’t explain he wasn’t drowned in alcohol so he went with the official report of underage DUI, and soon became the town drunk.

After the fourth bar fight, Michael lost count of his ins and outs with justice. He couldn’t remember the nights spent in the drunk tank, or talking to a police officer, or worse, being taken into the precinct by none other than perfect Max Evans.

Their fall out had been preceded by a summer of hovering over Isobel while dealing, each of them, with their own ghosts – Michael couldn’t deny that his decision to convince Isobel to send Liz away hadn’t been the best of them all, but Max wouldn’t have stood a whole summer of grieving, and their secret needed to be safe. But in the end the memories of what he’d done – the reminder of three corpses floating in the air, the memory of two teenagers and a hammer in a toolshed – were stronger and turned him into a bickering man. He couldn’t bear the sight of Max, always the saint – as if he hadn’t been there plotting to cover up the murders – so he distanced himself, poured his soul into acetone-laced whiskeys, and he let himself drift away.

He stood by Isobel’s side, but he couldn’t make himself be nice to the only person who knew he wasn’t a criminal but always treated him like one.

Although he was on speaking terms with Max, he didn’t want to spend his twenty-second birthday with him, so he told Isobel he had plans of getting wasted and hook up with some pretty brunette – he had acquired a reputation he had to maintain – and went straight to the Airstream he had bought a couple of months before after spending way more money than he had actually earned in drinks at the Wild Pony.

That night he left with a blonde in his arm – the same blonde who was sleeping in his bunk, naked and disheveled, as he just felt as empty as he always did after a night like this one. As silent as he could he left the bed and put on his jeans, no shirt, heading for the kitchenette. Michael took a beer from the small fridge inside and sat on a lawn chair outside the trailer, ready to enjoy a small wallowing pity party.

The stars shone brighter from Foster Homestead Ranch, it seemed.

Flames crackled in the fire he had set up right in front of his chair when he heard an engine at his back. He was facing the stars, and lately no one visited him anymore – Isobel knew not to mess with him when he was feeling low, and Max never really worried – so he tensed, ready for fight or flight, whatever would be safer.

“It took me ages to find out where you stayed these days,” said a voice he would never forget, but he still didn’t bulge. “It’s a nice upgrade from that truck of yours.”

Michael stood up and turned around to find Alex Manes looking back at him with an undecipherable glint in his brown eyes. His stance was so military it hurt Michael – no trace of the spiky hear nor the kohl or the painted nails; instead Michael was staring into the deep eyes of someone who stood still, hair short and plain, no earring, nothing of the rebel teenager he had fallen for.

Michael would have gone to the end of the world for Alex in that moment, and the very thought frightened him and gave him strength.

They remained still for a second before Michael took a tentative step towards Alex. His heart was bursting with what resembled so close to _love_ that Michael felt lightheaded.

Alex had come back. _To him_.

“You back from Afghanistan?” he asked stupidly. _Way to go, Guerin_ , he admonished himself. _Obviously he’s back from wherever he went on to war!_

“I came looking for you as soon as I was discharged from the base,” Alex explained. Michael realized he was trembling. He took another step, but was cut off by another voice, this time coming from inside the Airstream. It froze both of them, and by the second Michael realized his mistake, he also knew he was doomed.

“Mickey, aren’t you coming back to bed? It’s kinda cold without you here.”

Alex’s eyes darted to the ajar door, but the feminine voice gave away too much – and yet too little. He looked back to Michael before his face closed completely and merged into some sort of cool mask.

“I didn’t realize you weren’t alone. Sorry to interrupt,” he muttered, turning on his heels and all but running away to the car that had brought him to Michael.

“Alex, wait! Alex!”

But Michael was too slow – it was as if he was walking on fucking oil – or Alex was too quick, but in a couple of seconds all was said and done, and Michael realized he hadn’t been one for fight or flight.

Michael didn’t come back inside the Airstream. He urged the girl to go back home with a sickening growl, and he sank down on his lawn chair, fully knowing he had begun a path down self-destruction that very night.

He had been the one abandoned, once again, in the desert. And this time it had been solely his fault.

 

_**for a minute i was stone-cold sober** _

One night, after learning that Alex had been sent to Iraq, Michael had an epiphany of sorts, and found out that although he thought he couldn’t keep on living if Alex died in war – although he thought he _wouldn’t_ stand a life without Alex, as sappy as that sounded – he needed to get back to being himself, sort of, for his own sake, or he risked becoming just the shadow he was by then. He still wasn’t sure whether there had ever been another Michael Guerin, in another world, who might have deserved to be happy, but that was surely not him. So he decided to keep on living even though breathing felt like a knife cutting through his heart.

That night, he got trashed at the Wild Pony – and didn’t Maria kick his sorry and drunken ass out as unceremoniously as possible – and somehow managed to drive through the desert and trespass military property, landing himself arrested and interrogated by none other than Jesse Manes. Michael would never remember mostly of it – he was so wasted – but one sentence made it through his foggy mind while sitting at a table with the older man pacing around the room.

“You know breaking into a military base is a felony, right? I’m filing you in for this. You’re probably working for some kind of terrorist unit for all we know.”

That alone sobered him up enough to focus. He wasn’t exactly a saint, but he wasn’t a criminal either. No matter his reasons for staying in Roswell, with a criminal record he would not be able to find a job or keep the one he already had at Foster Homestead Ranch. The threat was implicit in the words; by then, Michael had already sobered up enough to understand that this wasn’t a common interrogation – Jesse Manes was trying to scare him, and damn it if he wasn’t successful while at it.

“I thought I had gotten rid of you that night at the toolshed,” Manes said viciously. “At least I got my son out of your pawns in time for him to become a real Manes man.”

The glass around the cell vibrated even though Michael was trying to keep himself in check. Manes looked a bit taken aback before pushing the subject. “That a sore spot, Guerin? I didn’t take you for a softie, but I guess I was wrong. Maybe everything my son was, he was because of that cancer you are to this place. When I took him from under your spell, he said a few things – about you both – that now I understand.”

The glass was on the verge of shattering, but he managed to contain himself a few more seconds. Michael remembered objects flying around whenever they got close – whenever Alex came to find him out in the desert, whenever he felt his heart was just about to explode with pent-up desire – but he had thought no one had ever noticed. Maybe he had been wrong all along.

He would have trusted Alex with his life.

That had been before the toolshed, before Afghanistan and the break down.

Before Michael shattered Alex’s heart with just one stupid mistake.

It was all clear in his mind despite the alcohol running through his veins. Alex had gone to his father with some stupid suspicions, scorned and broken.

Michael could never blame him – all in all, he hadn’t been sincere either, and their downfall had been solely his fault – but he needed an out of the situation with Sergeant Manes as soon as possible. He also knew Manes was testing the waters when he gave him a shrug and a drunken reply, and the older man didn’t push further – not with words, anyway.

Maybe he didn’t have proof of anything.

Michael got out of the base by daylight, battered and broken, with a criminal record under his belt and a promise from Jesse Manes to always keep an eye on him.

It didn’t matter anymore. Alex had betrayed him – his hopes, his dreams – and Michael knew he was to blame for it.

 

_**your love is more than worth its weight in gold** _

As I come back from that trip down to memory lane, I start feeling more and more exhausted. The nightmares are far stronger than others I used to have, but ever since Alex has come back to Roswell I haven’t had a single night of full rest – I usually just have them while asleep, but in times of great stress, the nightmares take control and I tend to dreamwalk through them. When that happens – and it surely does, more often than not – all I want to do is crawl back into my bunk and cry myself to sleep.

_Macho cowboy swagger much, huh?_

Those words still hurt, even if they are just in my head. I never wanted to become the man I am now. I wanted to be an engineer, I wanted to own the world – not the other way around. But this is my life now, and time has proved once and again that I cannot fight what’s written in the stars.

Almost suffocating, I jump back into my truck and make it home, or at least where everyone thinks it’s my home. Something inside of me is screaming all the way back, and only quiets when I pick up a beer outside of the Airstream and sit, waiting for a new blow to come in the form of perfect Max Evans.

“Here to pour salt in a wound?”

“I shouldn't have thrown Alex in your face like that. I'm sorry.”

“It's just him, you know? Screws me up.”

The rest of the night turns out a blur – Isobel deciding to lock herself up in some psych ward, Max and presumably Noah standing by her side, my own journey to the Wild Pony for a strong shot of _whatever_ that can make me numb.

Funny how the supposedly strongest of us all – the one who has covered up for them in every way possible, the genius and the unbreakable – is slumped against a counter in a closed bar, holding one Maria DeLuca in his arms as she cries her heart out.

Who takes care of me when I need comfort?

As it turns out to be, the scene unfolds itself for a few days straight, a repeating pattern of alcohol, silence and tears – me coming to the Wild Pony after closing time, Maria waiting for me with whiskey and quietness, both losing ourselves in alcohol and strife, until she sobers up enough to walk or I end up being more drunk than expected.

Tonight, it’s the former rather than the latter.

Maria finally calms herself enough to be able to walk towards the door and kick me out, not as unceremoniously as so many times before, but with a glint of something suspiciously similar to gratitude in her deep eyes. I bow at her, cowboy hat long forgotten somewhere I can’t remember, and I walk away. Although my truck is parked outside the Pony, it just seems fitting that I walk for a while, taking in my surroundings as my life crumbles.

The museum is dark in the wee hours of the night as I approach it with unsteady steps. I don’t notice the shadow cast over the door until I reach the building, and see the crutch resting against a body I pride myself of knowing inside and out – or maybe that was before life thrusted us away.

“Guerin,” Alex says with a soft voice, turning to face me – only not meeting my eyes.

“Alex,” I breathe out, suddenly nervous. I shouldn’t be, because he manifested clearly his discontent with me – he said out and loud that he doesn’t want to be related in any way to me. “What are you doing here?”

“Could ask you the same question, but I guess I now know the answer,” he replied cryptically, still not looking at me in the eye. “I bet you’ve had a good share of alcohol tonight.”

It would have sounded chill if it hadn’t been so loaded with a feeling I can’t quite put my finger on. “Not really.”

“Maybe not that much of alcohol as of acetone, then,” he keeps on. My pupils go wild at his words, and I manage to keep my breathing under control – just barely.

“What do you mean, acetone?”

“Don’t play fool with me, Michael,” he says softly, and it’s the first time in eons he’s called me by my name. Bad luck it has to be the night I find out he, somehow, _knows_. “I know almost everything. I’ve seen it. I’ve _felt_ it.”

I start withdrawing from the magnetic that pulls me to him whenever he’s around. This has to be another nightmare, only this time it feels and sounds as tangible as real life. “Still don’t know what you mean, Manes,” I try for the careless tone, but Alex is having none of it.

“I’ve seen your file,” he speaks slowly, as if I’m suddenly stupid. “My father has a whole file marked in red with your name, everything he’s managed to scrape out of your life. He’s labeled you as a terrorist.”

I scoff at the words, remembering one night, not so long ago, when Jesse Manes promised me with fists and blood that I would never forget him. “D’you believe that?”

“The terrorist act?” he laughs bitterly. “No, I don’t. The alien part? That’s a whole different story.”

My heart stops beating altogether. This _has_ to be a nightmare, a vivid one, but a nightmare nonetheless. Because Alex can’t possibly be saying what I am hearing coming out of his mouth. “Alien? And you say I’m the one who had too many shots? What are you on, Alex?”

He doesn’t speak, not at first. He takes a step towards the back alley right next to the museum, and I follow. I feel I could follow him wherever he might take me – heedless, hopelessly – even if it means following him to my own death.

Which may perfectly be the case, in fact.

In the ally stands, against the darkness of the night, his car. He clicks the remote and the front lights blink twice. He motions for me to surround the vehicle as he jumps in the pilot seat. I crawl in the passenger seat and close the door, feeling wearier by the second.

After a few moments while I despair between wanting to flee and wanting to kiss the frown out of his brow, Alex reaches below my seat and produces a small package wrought in paper. Silently, he stretches his arm to me and urges me to take the package. I pry it open from a corner of the paper, and what I think I’m seeing in the shadows cast by the streetlamps make me pale.

“What the-” I spit out. _For fuck’s sake_.

“I’m taking us to a safer place to talk,” Alex says, starting the engine. “We cannot be seen with that... artifact, unless we want the whole army on our tails.”

The trail up to what looks like Jim Valenti’s hunting cabin is silent but loaded. When Alex kills the engine in front of the cabin, he shrugs off my non-verbal question, “Jim left it to me. I guess he knew that I wouldn’t have a home to come back to when I returned to Roswell, if I ever returned.”

And don’t those words hurt like a million knifes.

Inside the cabin the light is dim. Alex makes me sit on a chair and he goes for the couch, breach wider than ever between us. “You can open it now.”

I don’t need to. I am pretty positive that it is a crystal that matches the one I have in the Airstream. A piece of other worlds – a key to interspace travels. “How did you find it?” I ask instead.

“Jim had it hidden in a wall here,” he explains succinctly. “After what I’ve learned today, I think I’m not far off thinking you might know what it is, how it works.”

“Don’t know why you would think that,” I go for the disdainful attitude, but Alex is still looking at me as if he could read my soul. For a second I want to believe he is going to retaliate, to fight back and tell me to explain, but what he says – the way he speaks – breaks me.

_Big macho cowboy softie._

“I’ve seen another piece similar to this in your Airstream,” he explains. The hands that have been resting on his thighs are now being shown to me, palms up, as if he’s offering some sort of truce. “The night we... The night I stayed. At first I couldn’t sleep, so I kinda snooped around. I know I shouldn’t have, but I did. And I saw it, didn’t know what it was, but today it makes all the sense in this world.”

The suffocating feeling bubbles up inside of me. I can’t control it, and that is not a good sign. It’s been a while since I last couldn’t control myself, and even my rogue side is aware that right now isn’t a good moment to keep on with my tendency to lose myself in the chaos. However, despite my efforts to keep myself in line, I can sense – I can see – a couple decorating items on Alex’s table levitating at his back.

“Still don’t think I know I can help you with whatever you’re asking me about.”

He takes in my sudden urge to look over his shoulder, and without turning around he sighs. “I guess there are things flying around at my back, right? There are moments when you can’t control it, then? Maybe when you’re scared?”

Something in his eyes makes me believe that he is not going to stop questioning, and I may as well go for it – just try to keep Max and Isobel out of this for as long as I can – but there is something holding me back.

“I am not scared,” I say firmly. Some keychain drops back with a thud on the table. “Why should I? Is there something for me to be scared of right now?”

“Maybe the fact that I know who you are.”

It’s the way he says it – as if I am, in fact, someone, a _who_ instead of a _what_ – that does me in. “I don’t think you are aware that you probably don’t know shit about me.” I get up and start pacing the room. I can’t go anywhere – my truck is still outside the Wild Pony – but I can’t stay still under this storm.

“Other than you are supposedly an alien, I used to believe I knew you inside out pretty well. Now I don’t know. Care to fill me in?”

“There’s nothing really that I could say,” I begin. “You already believe you know who I am, _what_ am. Let’s leave it at that.”

“But I don’t,” and the words come out of Alex’s mouth as a plea. I have never been able to deny him anything. _Ever_. “I want to understand. I want to make amends with a past I don’t fully comprehend, and make sure I have a future to look forward to. The only common point between past, present and future is _you_ and I don’t like this feeling of not knowing you at all. I’m trying really hard to understand.”

“I cannot give you whatever you are looking for,” I say quietly. The rage inside me is rising, piling up until all I can hear is the scream taking over my mind. “It’s not just my tale to tell, Alex. I can’t.”

“Just answer this question, simple and forward. I can even tell you everything I know. Everything I think I know, anyway.”

His eyes are piercing me, and somehow the rage is appeased. I sigh, sitting down again, my hand brushing past my locks nervously. “Fire away.”

Giving in is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. Yet it is the most freeing feeling in the world, when Alex leans in and speaks, softly, sweetly. “Are you an alien, Michael?”

Every memory of us come rushing down on me – the first time I saw him, the first time I realized he could be the one for me, our first kiss, our first night together, the hammer, the pain and the loneliness, the loss and the love – with a force I have never felt before. I can only nod, not ready yet to unleash every bit of knowledge to him, yet unable to escape this situation. I secretly hoped I would have the chance to tell Alex, only I never thought it would be under these circumstances.

“Fine,” he says. He remains silent for a while, as I fight the urge to bite back. _Fine, really?_. “I always knew there was something different about you,” he keeps on. “I convinced myself that the weird things that used to happen whenever you were around were just figments of my overstimulated imagination. The flying things. The loaded air. The electricity. I assumed it was because I felt just so strongly-because I loved you so much. I didn’t see past it until it was too late. And I made a big mistake.”

“I know,” I can’t resist piping in. “I just didn’t think you would notice, and yet I expected you to just _know_. I know you told your father something.”

“How?” he asks, bewildered. “I would have thought you and him weren’t exactly on speaking terms. That he wouldn’t talk, that he would _act_.”

“When he doesn’t have a hammer handy he can be really talkative,” I retort bitterly. “Let’s say we had an interesting chat a couple of years ago.” I pause. “You are taking this far more sternly than I thought you would, honestly.”

He doesn’t seem to hear me. I can almost see the whirring in his head, the ideas piling up in his mind as he thinks he can imagine the sort of torture his father put me through the last time we were face to face. He chews on his lower lip slowly, thinking hard. When he speaks up, it sounds as if he has made up his mind. “Whatever it is he thinks he knows, he’s dangerous. He’s a menace to you, to Max and to Isobel. He still doesn’t know about them, but if I made the connection, he sure as hell will. He doesn’t have any proof, yet. But he will. We have to get you out of his reach as soon as possible.”

“I-what?” I wasn’t expecting that. I’m not sure what I wanted him to say, but it surely wasn’t this. “Are you talking about fleeing? Aren’t you going to turn me in? Turn _us_ in? What the actual fuck, Alex?”

For some strange reason, I feel more betrayed now by his forwardness in organizing an escape than by his apparent lack of interest in wherever I come from. It feels like a nail in the head – all this time I have been waiting for him, life on hold for one reason or another, awaiting my turn to be happy. He has deflected that time and again, and now that the cards are shown all he thinks is to send me away. _I haven’t been fighting for so long just to give up and run, just like that_.

I’m not letting him let go again. But I’m scared that my own stubbornness might lead to a perilous situation for Max and Isobel. They’re my family, after all.

“I’m sorry I left,” Alex mutters. The sudden change of pace takes me by surprise, my step falters. I turn around to face him. “I know this whole mess is my fault.”

“How can it possibly be your fault?” I laugh bitterly. “How can you be at fault for the intergalactic Titanic that was that messed up trip through the stars, when we were spat in this Earth? How can it be your fault that we were so scared that we didn’t want to trust anyone?”

“Don’t,” he replies. His eyes are glistening with tears. “I mean – it was my fault my father took your quiet with a hammer, it was my fault to leave for the army, it was my fault to walk up on you that night and get drunk and spill every suspicion I ever had to the wrong people. It _is_ my fault that you are never going to look back at me.”

“I told you already,” I say tiredly, finally coming to halt right in front of him. I bend until I am at his level, eyes locked with his. “I never look away. Not really.”

For a moment long, all the stress of having Jesse Manes and his hound of dogs hunting us down is forgotten. Once again, I get lost in the caress that those eyes gift my soul – I am going to end up believing I do have a soul – and I drown in the air he breathes.

“You’ve said I am taking this better than expected,” he whispers, never looking away. “It’s not because I’ve had all day to accept it. It’s not because I’ve _maybe_ hit my father with my crutch over it.” I gasp. “He wanted me to spy on you,” he offers simply. “I just couldn’t let him, and I needed time. So I kicked the daylights out of him.”

I am torn between laughing and shivering. “He’s not going to be happy. You could be court martialed.”

“I bet he isn’t. And I’m sure I will. It won’t matter because I am trying my best here to protect you now, to make up for all those times I couldn’t, for all the moments I’ve let you down.”

“You’re protecting me by making me run away? Because let me tell you, I’m not going anywhere.” I shudder at the thought of leaving Roswell, of getting ahead of the only person who has ever felt like home to me.

“You have to. All of you have to go. Bring Noah with you. It’s not safe for you here anymore.”

“Could you please stop deciding what’s safe and what’s not in _my_ life, Manes?” I all but shriek in defeat. “You were saying something interesting before getting carried away in this nonsense of me leaving you behind.” I take his hand in mine as encouragement. He bites the bullet and blushes.

“I’ve always known you were different,” he continues. “It has _never_ mattered to me. What if you’re not from around here?”

I chuckle. “I am from way further than not around here.”

“I never believed in aliens. All that nonsensical chatter about outer space and other forms of life. Nah, never believed in that,” he squeezes my hand. “But I’ve always believed in you, no matter what. I still do, even though I seem completely unable to show it without starting a fight or letting my father get into my head.”

I hold my breath for long moments.

“I have finally understood that you were saying you loved me all this time, in different and very cryptic ways, and I was too busy being dramatic over myself that I missed it,” he sums up, eyes darting from mine. “I guess this is my way of saying I love you too, if you’d still have me, even if you have to leave me behind. Even if you’re not human, because, honestly, I have never met anyone more human than you.”

I forget about the crystals. I forget about the hunt, about the dangers and whatnots, about the humanly fears that cripple at me. My fingers seek his chin, and I am forcing him to look back at me before I can even realize it. “I am not going anywhere. Max and Isobel aren’t going anywhere. We will stay, and we will fight. I will find the strength to face your father and whatever shit he wants to throw at us. Because you will be by my side. Don’t be silly, Alex. D’you really think that after ten years of pining I would let you go without a fight? You’re my moment, Alex. You’re the only one I’ve ever felt like this for. Don’t you even think I’m going anywhere because I won’t. I love you too much to ever let go of you again.”

Fate is sealed as he searches in my eyes for any lie in the longest speech I have probably given in my life. I feel his doubts dissipate as he finds whatever he is looking for inside of me, and he holds my gaze with more determination than ever.

What can I do? He doesn’t leave me any options.

It feels like a rerun of a bad romantic comedy, but I surge forward as I always do and I kiss him, capturing his soul in just one caress. He reciprocates slowly at first, but soon it escalates, and we definitely forget about anything that’s not us and this moment to be cherished.

And just like that, I feel the chaos settling down inside of me, silence taking over madness, a quiet entropy of sorts.

This war is finally over.

**Author's Note:**

> Section titles from James Arthur’s _Say You Won’t Let Go_. The lyrics Michael sings to Alex are taken from Axium's _The Finish Line_. Also, all of this story has been inspired by the picture we see in 1x02 - that of them sharing a good carefree moment with their guitar in the desert. That sole image has inspired this, and it spiraled out of control from there.
> 
> I wanted to convey what I think Michael is feeling all along in this series - all the chaos inside that, for me, only music and Alex can quiet. He states that clearly in 1x06, and I find it oddly inspiring that he's the only one all along who hasn't committed any crime but yet he's the only one with a terrorist red flag on him and a criminal reputation.
> 
> Anyway, enough rambling. Thanks for reading!


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